Victor
by Catri Howlman-Carthaki spy
Summary: It doesn't get any easier. An AU where the revolution didn't start on schedule. One-shot. Warnings inside.


**Title:** Victor  
**Author:** Catty-the-spy  
**Rating: **PG-13  
**Pairing:** Katniss/Peeta, gen overall  
**Warnings: **au, oc, character death  
**Notes:** For the hc bingo prompt "forced to participate in illegal / hurtful activity". First posted on my dw/lj.

**_Summary:_** It doesn't get any easier. An AU where the revolution didn't start on schedule.

* * *

She's better at this now. In the corridors she's Katniss. When the doors come open and the lights go up, she's Mrs. Mellark, the girl on fire.

The first few years she couldn't manage. Thankfully the Capitol fawned over her missteps. It's easier now, now that she knows how to smile and tilt her head, now that she's learned when to tug their heartstrings and when to be cold and aloof.

When Caesar Flickerman turns to her and asks "What does it feel like to be in the Capitol again?" she doesn't say it's a waking nightmare.

She leans forward and widens her eyes. "It's a dream."

The District Twelve tributes for the third Quarter Quell are a thirty year old merchant named Pepper and a seven year old boy named Markis. No one volunteers to take the boy's place.

The merchant holds the boy's hand as they stop on the train and later tucks him into bed. She comes to Katniss in the middle of the night and says "I want him to win."

She and a fifty year old man from Eight join forces in the arena while Katniss and Peeta struggle to find sponsors.

The boy comes out silent and traumatized, but alive. At the very least, he's alive.

Cinna and Portia provide complementing outfits for their appearances in public. As always, Cinna's clothes are her armor.

In public, she and Peeta are always together, two halves of an unbreakable whole. In private…there is friendship and affection, but little more than that. Peeta paints and bakes and tries to take care of everyone. Katniss roams the district and hunts whenever she can.

At night they sleep close together to keep the nightmares at bay. During the day, they run away from each other, as if running could make them forget.

They lose both their tributes the second year.

Peeta makes sure Markis doesn't watch, but Katniss watches every death. She can't take her eyes off it.

"It doesn't get any easier," Haymitch says. He's clutching a bottle of liquor.

The tributes from Eight had no mentors. They died quickly; the game makers made sure of that.

_Uprising in Eight_, Katniss thinks.

There's a clatter from deeper in the suite. Markis has over turned something, again.

It doesn't get any easier.

Katniss navigates the lounge with Peeta matching her step for step. Victors of all ages fill the room, drinking, talking. It feels like a glitzy cage.

She has one hand on the stem of her glass, the other squeezing the life out of Peeta's arm. She takes shallow sips of her quarter-strength liquor, but it doesn't matter. The ever present Avoxes keep her glass full, the way they hover makes her feel as if she drinks more than she does. She thanks them every time – makes herself thank them.

"You can take the girl out of the back woods…" Finnick says. His raises his glass to her and downs it. The clownish Capitol woman on his arms squawks a laugh, spilling her fizzy purple drink down the side of her dress.

Katniss leans into Peeta, looks down, hopes the red in her cheeks can be taken as embarrassment.

How long has it been now?

She downs her own drink. The Avoxes fill it again, ever accommodating.

The male tribute is an eighteen year old who can wield a pickaxe like an extension of his arm. The female is a fourteen year old who volunteered for her seventeen year old sister.

"She's not…like other people," the girl confessed in her interview. "Her mind doesn't work the same way. She wouldn't have had a chance."The coverage compares the girl to Katniss.

They both die. Katniss's perfectly manicured nails dig bloody cresents into her palms when the female tribute is slowly burned to death.

All the sponsors in the world can't stop the game makers from sabotaging you.

Ten. That's how many tributes Katniss has been able to save. In between games are snippets of news. District Eleven is under martial law – their tributes are starved. District Four sends shipments of diseased fish – the tributes are attacked by poisonous snakes and suffocating gas. District Eight endlessly riots and burns – their tributes suffer one ghastly death after the other; they haven't had a victor in years.

And District Twelve shuffles on, never doing anything to step out of line. Never daring.

Katniss comes home to a full kitchen. It's second nature to hide her surprise. She sets her game bag with its wild turkey on the counter, kisses Peeta on the cheek. She surveys her company.

Markis is usual. He rocks in his seat, staring at Pepper's cracked watch which hangs loose on his wrist. Gale is looking everywhere but at Katniss, but Madge spares her a smile. Half of Katniss's victors are there, and so is Haymitch.

Katniss turns to him. "What's going on?"

"Turn on your television."

District Thirteen exists and they've hacked the Capitol feed. They watch in silence. In the kitchen, Markis rocks endlessly, the creak of his chair just irregular enough, just grating enough, that no one can tune it out.

Peeta gets up to deal with the bird not long before the power cuts out.

Haymitch looks at Katniss in the half light. "Well?"


End file.
